Re: Best platform for Ultima 3/4/5?

[Linards Ticmanis <ticmanis@gmx.de>]

David Murray wrote:

> Some things I've already considered would be that the Apple II version
> might load from disk a lot quicker (and I know there is a lot of disk
> activity on these games) but the Apple II version would have no music
> like the Commodore 64/128.   Which trade-off is best?  Screenshots I
> saw on the internet show the graphics to be about the same.

A belated answer to this one for the benefit of future generations (yeah
right).

The Apple versions

1.) are the originals as the games were created on the Apple. Depending
on how anal you are, this should be enough.

2.) In U4+U5, offer more voices of music, but you do need a Mockingboard
card to get it. A guy on ebay is fairly regularly selling build-your-own
kits of this card.

3.) Have COLORED dungeons in U3+U4 (in U4, this means especially that
you can see a difference between the four kinds of magic fields), and
colored maps when viewing a gem. The Commodores produce grey-striped
graphics in these situations (from very similar assembly code) because
of the different way their color graphics work. U5 has color in these
situations on all three systems.

4.) Load faster, as you observed yourself. The C64 Ultima 5 fastloader
does not work on European (PAL) C64s, which makes this combination
unbearably slow.

5.) Apple U5 supports accelerators. It might be that it can run in
2.8MHz mode on a IIgs. But no guarantees as I don't own a IIgs.

Besides, what could beat purple cobblestone streets? Not even yellow
brick roads if you ask me. ;-)

On the downside, all of them look fair shitty on a IIgs's RGB monitor,
as they were really made with composite color in mind.

One more thing, try to apply the "shrine patch" before playing Ultima 4.
This applies to both Apple and Commodore versions. The patch removes a
bug that causes the shrines to give out only one message each.

-- 
Linards Ticmanis